Public Interest Law & Policy Seminar

3 units

Enrollment limit: 16 (approx. 8 second-years/approx. 8 third-years). In 2007-08, the School of Law and the Clinical Education Program will present the tenth annual Public Interest Law & Policy Speaker Series. This seminar runs parallel with the spring portion of the series. Students in the course read about the visiting speakers and read selected works of the speakers, and then meet with the speakers to discuss their public interest practice and scholarship. If it can be arranged, students also may read works and meet with presenters from conferences being held at the law school in the spring. The goal is for students to read a range of material that will provide an overview of both public interest law and public interest lawyering. It is essential that students do the reading in preparation for the weekly meetings with the visitors; students are required to submit questions based on the readings in advance of each class. The course will meet approximately once a week throughout most of the semester - usually (but not always) at one of the two times indicated below. Inevitably, some of the class times will need to be adjusted to fit the schedules of the Public Interest Law & Policy Speaker Series speakers (and conference speakers). Thus, students MUST have some flexibility in their schedules to cope with the variations. Students also are required to attend the public talks or watch the talks on the web. In an attempt to keep the meetings with the visitors as informal as possible, the seminar is limited to an enrollment of 16, with 8 slots available to second year students. The grade for the course is based upon a 20 page paper that each student will write applying ideas drawn from the public interest practice and scholarship of one or more of the visitors to a new topic of the student's choosing. Students are expected to discuss an area of public interest law and demonstrate how public interest lawyering has (or has not) or might (or might not) transform that area of public interest law. The final grade will be adjusted for the quality of questions presented and participation in the discussion sessions with the visitors.